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Welcome to HipCinema Labs

We are a film incubator in Philadelphia that serves Pennsylvania and New Jersey in supporting socially conscious filmmakers.

Since 2018 HipCinema Labs has helped to garner $787,000 to create an infrastructure for women of color filmmakers in the Pennsylvania and Mid-Atlantic region. We helped to birth SIFTMedia 215 Collective and continue to work with them to produce a series of short films called COVID1619. Our goal is to engage in fruitful dialog with filmmakers and regional stakeholders to bring untold and hidden stories to light. In late 2020, three SIFT members were invite by IPMF to be part of a panel that nominated 18 projects for $400,000 in support of local independent filmmakers.

SIFTMedia 215 is now it’s own independent B-Corporation that uses Fractured Atlas as a fiscal conduit. We are pleased to announce that in June 2021, Independence Public Media Foundation [IPMF] made a two-year operating grant to SIFTMedia 215.

NEXT EVENT: Rea Tajiri’s World Premiere of WISDOM GONE WILD is at BlackStar August 6th, 2022. Congrats!

Latimer Film Project receives $50K as part of Residency at the Tull Family Theater

Martha Conley and Nadine Patterson are the first filmmakers in residence at The Tull Family Theater in Sewickley Pennsylvania.

The Tull Family Theater in Sewickley has worked to create programming combining film with low-cost or free screenings, educational opportunities, and chances to connect with the community. Now the theater has announced a new artists-in-residency program to advance the work of two local Black filmmakers. The filmmakers and The Tull received a $100,000 grant from New Sun Rising in the second round of Arts Equity Re-imagined Fund.

The theater will host Nadine M. Patterson and Martha Richards Conley for a year-long residency meant to support the production of their limited dramatic series about Lewis Latimer, an under-recognized Black inventor who developed a successful light bulb filament in the 1880s. Read more about it here.

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SIFTMedia 215
Our film collaborative for Black and Latinx women filmmakers.

The Unknown Tales of Lewis and Mary Latimer
Development lab for a television mini-series on Lewis Latimer, inventor of the long lasting carbon filament in the electric light bulb.

Harriet Tubman Short Film
“We Are Free Because of Harriet Tubman is a short film that premiered in 2019 with community screening in tandem with Kasi Lemmons’ HARRIET at the Tull Family Theater and Hiway Theater in Pennsylvania.

Donate now at Fractured Atlas!

About HipCinema Labs
Learn more about our film incubator.